


coming up only to drown

by placeless



Category: Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Angst, Lots of drug use, M/M, Poor Ryan, lots of alcohol use, modern ryan and brendon, mostly just ryan reminiscing about brendon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-08-21
Updated: 2015-10-03
Packaged: 2018-04-16 11:35:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4623873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/placeless/pseuds/placeless
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>aka the downfall of ryan ross</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. vile romance, turned dreams into an empire

**Author's Note:**

> this is basically just ryan's life post-split. i realise that his life seems to have gotten significantly better since he has helena and everything, but a couple months ago it seemed that he was going through a pretty rough time.
> 
> this is basically, like, 2011 and onwards.

ryan is lost in a sea of alcohol. the colours of the bar blur together, as do the voices and the people. long ago, he decided that alcohol can help mend a broken heart, because it leads to gateways of one night stands and drunken mishaps. now, he’s not too sure.

his phone vibrates in his pocket, but he doesn’t want to talk to anyone, so he doesn’t answer it. a girl next to him is chatting noisily, with chemical lips and bleached hair. she’s poison, like the sweet alcohol in front of him, but he doesn’t mind. sometimes he needs a bit of poison.

“are you even listening to me?” she asks, voice nasally. he shakes his head and she rolls her eyes. “you wanna make out?” he nods.

ten minutes later, he’s in a dark corner with poison. when she touches his body, it’s harsh. she squeezes and scratches, and he wants to shout at her because she’s so unlike _him._ but he can’t.

she leaves bruises on his neck and scratches on his stomach to remember her by. when they’re done, everything is hotter, and sweatier, and hormones radiate off everyone. it makes him sick.

he stumbles outside, with lipstick smeared on his face and pain pounding in his head. his phone is still buzzing — whoever is calling him must really want to talk. he doesn’t, though.

when he gets back to his apartment, he can’t find his key. he curses whatever distant entity there is, and slumps down onto the ground.

life used to be wound around his hand, like a spool of yarn. he used to conduct his own existence, with an orchestra playing in the background. but now all the yarn is pooled on the floor, and it’s just him sitting in an empty theatre, a bottle of beer in hand.

maybe it’s for the best, though.


	2. i tried to breathe through the trees of loneliness

a week later, ryan finds himself crammed between dozens of people, listening to loud techno music blare from speakers hanging on the wall. he lost dan ages ago, and has now resorted to nursing a bottle of beer and grinding against a random girl.

he used to have higher standards than this. he used to be so pretentious and picky — girls would approach him, with sultry words on their lips, not vice versa. but now he’s desperate, clinging to sex like a life source.

when he escapes the crowd, his hands reach for the small packet of coke someone had given him when he’d entered. his vision is hazy and everything is in technicolor. it’s heaven.

he disappears into the bathroom, snorting a line. it burns in his nostrils and he twitches involuntarily, but is soon overwhelmed by the mirages of madness that dance before his eyes. he blearily steps out of the bathroom, practically falling into a man going the opposite direction.

when his eyes meet the other’s, he tilts his head to the side and slurs, “brendon?”

if it were brendon, then maybe they could’ve worked things out. maybe he could’ve gotten one last kiss; one last goodbye. but instead the man sneers, “who the fuck is brendon?” and leaves. ryan pretends that his heart doesn’t break a little at the stranger’s words.

when dan finds him twenty minutes later, he’s curled up underneath a chair. he probably looks like an addict, but he’s almost sure that that’s what he is. he’s addicted to the drug that is brendon urie, and can never forget it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i probably suck at writing and i feel kind of like an asshole for writing off ryan as nothing but a hopeless lover of brendon, but eh. this is fiction.


	3. all of the drugs

the new album comes out — _vices & virtues._ ryan stares at brendon and spencer, splayed out on the cover of some music magazine. they look good. _really_ good. far better than him.

ryan twists the title of the album into a metaphor for him and brendon’s relationship. filled with sins and honesty, lechery and chastity — impure, immoral, lustful; righteous, innocent, ethical.

vices, virtues.

he gets rid of the pent up guilt inside of him with a hooker. she’s pretty and does whatever he wants her to do, but that’s not enough. he ends up throwing her out after half an hour, choosing to wallow in self-pity for the rest of the day.

in the end, he heads to a shitty dive down the street. fluorescent lights flicker in the windows and he stares at them for awhile as he’s leaving, thinking that this must be what his soul looks like now — a collection of lights, glimmering to the beat of static, empty and hollow and guarding the door of a place where alcohol floods through veins and throats.

maybe he’s had a bit too much to drink.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this was so bad and stupid and basically just me sounding pretentious as _fuck_ but at this point i don't even care


End file.
